London is enjoying a gin renaissance - so Claire Cohen gets in the
spirit and joins a tour of the capital's best gin bars and distilleries

Drinking gin used to be straightforward: spirit, tonic, ice and a slice. Or - if we're harking back to Hogarthian times - a pint pot dunked into a tin bath tub of the stuff, followed by a nice lie down in the gutter.

Of course, the gin renaissance has been well documented. But what might have seemed faddy, has become a movement - as we become more adventurous and better-educated about what we’re drinking.

No longer are we satisfied with slurping a couple of cheap gins and having a good cry on the night bus home (more of which later). A wave of spirited enthusiasts has embraced premium gin and new brands are popping up all over the place. From Sipsmith to Tanqueray; Martin Millers to Monkey 47 - Britain's bars are simply bursting with botanicals.

Part of this revolution is award-winning bartender Leon Dalloway, 27, who learnt his trade in Manchester and London.

Dalloway had a long-term plan: to re-educate the people of London into the ways of gin. To that end, he's launched Shake, Rattle and Stir – a twice-a-week tour that takes in five of the capital's best bars, hidden distilleries and home-grown gins.

It doesn’t take long for our group of 15 to break the ice. There’s little so uniting, it seems, than a love of a tinkling gin and tonic. Glasses of water are cast aside, as we slurp at ‘Carnival Weekender' cocktails - a Notting Hill-inspired concoction containing jerk distillate (faintly meaty), apricot liqueur and – of course – Portobello 171 gin.

Leon keeps the conversation and the gin flowing. We learn how to fully appreciate the spirit (first, smell the back of your hand to 'reset' your olfactory senses, then blow gently on the liquid and inhale the bouquet) and are talked through its history; from Holland to Hogarth, via Prohibition and the Second World War.

I learn that gin is, in fact, vodka right up until the addition of juniper. So, all those delicate souls who claim that gin makes them weepy are, sadly, deluded. We discover that Plymouth gin must be made in Plymouth, but that London Dry Gin can be made anywhere. And that gin is actually cheaper to make than beer – it’s just those pesky taxes that send the price soaring.

The whole thing is part pub crawl, part history lesson and refreshingly different. We lap-up every minute.

Then, it's into the mini-bus for the drive to the next watering hole (although we're already feeling quite well watered).

The bars come in quick succession. We tick off the Perkin Reveller; drinking Beefeater while sat yards from the Tower of London (perkinreveller.co.uk). There are homemade tonics - lavender and honey, or black cardamom and rose - waiting for us at the Worship Street Whistling Shop off Old Street (whistlingshop.com). And we slurp pineapple shrub cocktails at Narnia-inspired Callooh Callay – you enter the back bar through a wardrobe - in Shoreditch (calloohcallaybar.com).

We stir, sniff and sip our way through any number of spirits and study gin bottles by candlelight. We crush juniper berries between our fingers to release the oils and then pop them in our mouths, wondering whether this 'gin fruit' could possibly count as one of our five a day.

But perhaps the most memorable venue (and not just because it comes early on in the evening) is the City of London Distillery, tucked away in a basement just off Fleet Street. The area’s first working distillery in more than 200 years, it boasts what is surely the shiniest copper still this side of the Square Mile and produces its eponymous gin on the premises. This we drink with fresh grapefruit and classic tonic. After all, some things are best served with a slice of simplicity.

*Shake, Rattle and Stir (shakerattleandstir.co.uk) costs £50pp, including five cocktails, five gin samples and transport.